All Chapters of Rejected by the Alpha Hockey Captain And Then Claimed By His: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Elias's POVI'd been turning the idea over for two days before I found the nerve to say it out loud, and even then I picked the worst possible moment, right after dinner, when she'd finally started to look something like relaxed, curled up near the fire with her hair still damp from washing it in the stream."I want to talk to you about something," I said, and watched her whole posture shift, wariness sliding back over her like a coat she never fully took off. "Not bad news. Just… a proposal. A practical one.""That's an ominous way to start a sentence.""Probably." I sat across from her, giving her space, needing the distance to say this properly without either of us reading more into my proximity than I meant. "Mac's report changes things. IronVale believes you're dead. That's protection, for now. But it won't last forever, someone eventually spots you in a border town, word travels, and the second anyone confirms you're alive, Magnus has every legal justification to finish what he

Elias's POVShe avoided me for most of the day after the fight, which I understood, and didn't push against. But by evening, with the cabin small and the silence between us starting to feel less like peace and more like something rotting, I decided the honesty I'd almost given her that morning deserved to be finished properly instead of left in pieces."Can I say something," I asked, sitting across from her at the small table, "and you don't have to respond to any of it. I just want to finish what I started this morning, the part I cut off."She looked up warily, but didn't refuse, so I took that as permission enough."You asked what I meant, after everything. I want to actually answer that instead of hiding behind 'nothing' again." I laced my fingers together on the table, needing somewhere to put my hands while I said this properly. "I told you about leaving IronVale. About my father, about Easton, about spending years believing I'd never be enough to matter to either of them. What

Elias's POVI laid my bedroll on the opposite side of the cabin from hers, as far as the small space allowed, and told myself the distance was a courtesy rather than what it actually was, which was self-preservation.My wolf disagreed violently.Wrong side, he said, the moment I stretched out on the cold floor, and I ignored him the same way I'd been ignoring him since the shrine, with steadily diminishing success. Mate. Bonded. Marked before witnesses. Wrong side of the room."We're not doing this tonight," I muttered under my breath, low enough that I hoped she wouldn't hear it from across the cabin, though the way her breathing hitched slightly told me she probably had.He didn't care what we were or weren't doing. He'd been agitated since the ceremony itself, some deep animal satisfaction at the binding tangled up with an equally deep animal frustration that the binding hadn't been followed by anything a wolf would actually recognize as claiming. Vows on paper meant nothing to him

Rosalie's POVThe gates of IronVale looked exactly the same as I remembered them, which felt wrong somehow, like the world should have changed as much as I had.I rode beside Elias, Mac a few paces behind with the pack horses, and the closer we got, the more my pulse hammered against my ribs, loud enough I was half-convinced the guards posted at the wall could hear it from here."Steady," Elias said quietly, not looking at me, keeping his eyes forward on the approaching gate. "Whatever happens in the next few minutes, I'm right here."I nodded, not trusting my voice, and watched the gate guards notice us approaching, first with the bored disinterest of men who'd watched a thousand travelers pass beneath this arch, then, as recognition dawned with shock.One of them actually dropped his spear.A Gate Guard's POVTomas had been standing post since dawn, half-asleep on his feet the way you got after six years of nothing more exciting passing through these gates than merchant carts and th

Elias's POVMagnus summoned me to his study an hour after the hall emptied, which surprised no one, least of all me. Some conversations had always been reserved for private rooms in this family, the ones with too much blood in them for public witnesses.He was standing at the window when I entered, hands clasped behind his back, exactly the posture I remembered from every dressing-down of my childhood, and something in my chest tightened involuntarily at the familiarity of it, old instincts refusing to fully let go even after six years of distance."Close the door," he said, without turning around.I did, and stood there a moment, waiting, refusing to be the first one to break the silence the way I always used to as a boy, desperate for any scrap of his attention."Six years," he said finally, turning to face me. "Six years without a word, and you return not with an apology, not with any explanation for your absence, but with a wife and a legal maneuver that strips me of authority I'v